Laughing Through the Flames Together

Parenting is a lot of things. It’s an honor, it’s a blessing, it’s a privilege and it’s also a job. Parenthood can either be the most joyous time of your life or a living hell from which there is no escape. Honestly, even though we are encouraged and expected to “cherish every moment” the hard truth is that parenting is often both. Parenthood is the hardest job anyone will ever have...except for maybe that guy that gets his heart ripped out by Mola Ram and is lowered down into the firey pit on Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. They aren’t without their similarities, anyway: High pressure. Sacrifice. Rip your heart out. In a cage descending into fire. Very hot. It burns!  

Okay, it’s not all that bad but it helps at times to keep things as light as possible and to not take it too seriously...even though you need to because you are single-handedly making choices that are in part forming your beloved children’s personalities that they will then be at the mercy of forever...and even though they will go forth with these personalities into the world either to make it or break it. Kiiind of totally a huge deal. But don’t worry. No pressure. “Kali maa shakti de!!” 

What could be harder than parenting? Single-parenting, obviously, would take about a thousand cakes on that one. But actually sometimes, albeit to a much lesser degree, it can also be co-parenting. Parenting is hard in general to wrap your will around but meeting another person on the same page who has their own preconceived notions of what parenting is or should be and staying on the same page when it comes to your beliefs on raising children and consistently standing by said beliefs in the face of distraction and frustration…two different heads of the same snarling beast and they both chew your face off. My husband and I can agree that this is often really shitty. Call a spade a spade. We both can also agree, however, that it is the best thing to ever happen to us so where do we meet in the middle of this? That’s the million dollar question. That’s also where the continual relationship work resides. It’s no laughing matter...except for when it is. 

This past weekend my husband and I were jokingly talking about our day, and he had an errand to run. I had the baby on the boob and the other two were being their loud and annoying selves because yes, kids are often loud and annoying no matter how many times you post their pictures on social media decreeing them your angels and your everything. I said, “You guys should go with your father,” giving him an eye and a Cheshire Cat beam. We knew I was mostly joking. His face visibly sunk in an exaggeration of protest because everyone knows it takes twice as long to do any errand with kids in tow, and he said, in a wailing womanly voice: “You haate me!” We laughed. Humor is often your saving grace. It’s also wonderful when our daughter chalks up everything that goes over her head to “adult comedy” as she calls it. We’re not entirely proud but this is where we find ourselves. Parents make jokes because you either laugh or you’ll cry. 

Later that day, after earlier having discussed how his truck has gotten him over 100,000 miles, he said how he had to go out to work on it for awhile. I teasingly accuse him: 

“You know, you’re truck hasn’t needed anything big but you SURE do work on it a lot? What are you sabotaging shit just to get out there and get away from us? ‘OOoh NOOOOoOOO my BRAKE line broke, I better get out there and FIX that today for sure!!’ Is that how it is? ...’Cause that’s what I’d be doing.”

Again, we laughed. Humor through parenthood is like saying that the knife wound in your side kinda looks like a face. It’s simultaneously both denial and complete and total acceptance. We started doing impressions of him taking out his brake lines and other truck parts because they really did go out recently and it does seem he is perpetually working on his truck during his brief time at home. It’s seemingly never ending; duties and projects drag on into a balmy eternity. Everything moves like chilled molasses because there is never enough time in a weekend. It’s funny because the poor guy is actually out there as I write this working on it again. This weekend it’s universal joints. Lucky bastard. It’s funny because it’s not funny. At least we have humor. 

I think if you can laugh together you have a lot to work with. If you can’t make each other laugh, then it’s going to be a hard road for you because it can get a tad rocky and you’re going to feel every bump and stone. If you’re laughing you kinda just roll over the top of some of them and it doesn’t seem like such a bumpy ride even if your shocks are shot. Who you have as a co-pilot traveling with you as your partner in crime on the road of parenthood matters a lot. It helps if you get along with your celly. Your partner ultimately helps to determine how bumpy the ride will be and even when you have a good one the struggle is still real. Parenthood is where relationships go to train for the UFC; it will either make your marriage stronger or take it down blow by blow. 

That poor bastard in the basket on Indiana Jones didn't survive the destructive flames in the pit. He evaporated. Kali needed her sacrifice. It all seems so gruesome. We can just say he represents your egoic parts that need to surrender to the sacrifice. In Hinduism, Kali is the goddess of death and destruction. In her earlier depictions she is often a crone with red eyes, holding weapons and severed heads, with black skin and protruding tongue, a real bad bitch. Westerners generally view her as evil because of her form and requirements of destruction and human sacrifice. But in her complexity, she is a dualistic goddess, in her later Kali Ma form she is also a symbol of Mother Nature, nurturing and benevolent. Kali is like the transformative power of tough love, your darkness transmuted. When we are breaking apart from circumstance and heading into darkness that is Kali, but when we are fitting the pieces back together and finding our light, that is also Mother Kali. From my understanding, that is. Maybe you can see where I’m heading with this metaphor. 

Dealing with the stresses of parenthood together exposes you to each other’s deepest wounds. If there is anything ugly in your core kids will pull that dark shit right out of you and cover it in glitter and boogers before shoving it directly and repeatedly into your frame of view. “Look! LOOK! Do you see this?!” Kids are Mola Ram invoking the power of Kali to tear into your chest and hold your still-beating heart in front of your face before sacrificing your ego in a pit of flames. In short: kids’ll fuck you up. You need a strong resolve to survive the destruction of the goddess Kali. It requires a tight connection, a sturdy bond to hold your relationship together in the fire as the flesh of your old selves is seared away in sacrifice. Parenthood is some serious shit. It burns a good bit but as with much of life, it helps to laugh. 

The Length of the Rainbow Bridge

Over two years ago now, on Saturday, May 20th 2017, we had to make the hard decision to put our buddy Buster to sleep, our beloved boxer mix dog, our family companion and friend. I haven't posted anything about it online yet even though it was awhile ago now. I wrote up most of a blog awhile back but then never finished or posted. A year after I still had his Pill Pockets in the closet and a bin of his supplements stuffed in a bottom cabinet. I'm not entirely sure why it is that I didn't post anything about it, perhaps because it was a difficult phase and decision for our family to deal with and make. Maybe I was too emotional at the time for the outreach, I don't know. I also had just given birth to our second child at the time. It was a time of transition for our family, but we have had some time to deal. Celie and I had a chat about him awhile back and we decided that we "don't feel horrible anymore" so I'm ready to post about it I reckon. Now, two years after she has started to ask about getting another dog. While I am not ready for that step quite yet, and am also currently preoccupied with now gearing up to have our third child, I suppose I could at the very least finish up the blog post. 

On August 4th, 2016 Buster was diagnosed with lymphoma cancer after we took him to the vet for a swollen neck and a persistent hacking cough. They delivered the sad news and I knew I had to reframe it for Celie somehow. She was just 6 at the time. It was also only around a week before we found out that I was pregnant with Jasper. We were excited to be having another baby but simultaneously sad for the impending loss we had ahead of us. The vet told us that dogs usually only live 4 to 6 weeks after diagnosis so we had to tell Celie something because we didn’t think we had much time. We were obviously heartbroken and were not looking forward to saying goodbye to him so soon, but I made the choice to tell Celie up front and talk to her about it through it all because I thought that he would die or that we would need to decide to put him to sleep within a month or so. Being 6  years old at the time, I felt that it would be good for her to be told up front in an age appropriate way. I immediately bought her All Dogs Go to Heaven and did my best to explain cancer to her and what was happening, also so that she would be aware that he wasn't feeling well and would act accordingly because we had no idea what was ahead of us. It forced me to break down death to a child's level while simultaneously reexploring my own thoughts and beliefs. It was painful, sad, and vulnerable, but in the end I am grateful that I had the opportunity to explain it to her using a dog companion first instead of a human one, as it was her first rememberable experience with death at the time. 

I am grateful for the pure love that Celie and Buster shared. We already had Buster when she was born so Celie was raised alongside her furry friend. “Buster” was even her first word. He was her four-legged older brother and he was so patient and gentle with her, despite her high energy. For that I will also forever be grateful. If he was a mean tempered dog, it could have been a bad experience but he seemed to understand that she was a tiny people, one of us, and very dear to us, never doing anything overtly aggressive unless in a defensive manner and having a great way of judging how gentle he needed to be with her. It helps to keep in mind that it was special for her to have a good connection with a dog so early and this was a gift in itself. It still hurt like hell and was one of the most heartbreaking things to witness and have to explain to her, given her mix of emotional reactions through it all especially because it ended up taking much longer than the vet initially told us.

I, of course, not wanting to accept the death sentence even in my adult mind, initially Googled my fingers off about dog lymphoma and things. I frantically considered chemotherapy briefly, read up on that. Decided against it. We purchased supplements and ebooks on dealing with canine cancer. I started him on a mixture of vitamins and things. Most notably we switched his dry dog food to grain free Blue Wilderness. Ultimately, though, his lymph nodes continued to swell and eventually he was hacking and could no longer eat the dry dog food. About a month after diagnosis he wasn't in the best shape, but he was still here. The swelling in the lymph nodes in this chest and throat eventually became so significant, though, affecting his ability to eat, that we decided to put him on prednisone to see if it would shrink them and give him some relief. This is basically the first line of cancer treatment with dogs anyway. Luckily it worked, the swelling went down, he was able to eat better again, and he just kept going. 

I had planned on making him his own homemade dog food from recipes I found on the internet in canine cancer support groups and the ebooks that I got, but in the end we just switched to Blue Wilderness canned food for the most part, mixing it with the grain free dried kibble. He seemed to love most kinds, he was hungry because of the prednisone so at least he kept eating. We were fortunate to be able to afford it because grain free dog food is so much more expensive and it added up! I switched up kinds when they were on sale but stuck to grain free, high protein. Merrick’s was a brand he liked a lot also and some of it honestly looked so good I would have eaten it! All through my pregnancy we were in this limbo state where we gave him his medication and bought him his special food, every week we repeated the drill and it somewhat stayed the same. I called in and refilled his prescription at the vet so many times. I broke his pills in half and put them into chunks of Fresh Pet loaves. All the while he slowly got worse but still remained basically Buster, playful and social with a happy tail. 

We switched him to a completely grain free diet when he was diagnosed and I attribute this to most of the bonus time that we got with him. Aside from his diet, we also refrained from giving him any table scraps unless it was a pure protein or fat source like meat or something. He lived quite a few fairly active months after diagnosis, fetching tennis balls a month or so in and even playing tug of war with Celie close to only a month before the end, but he slowly got worse, though, and the cancer ultimately took over his body. In the end it was in his stomach, which became swollen, and in his skin that started to harden and peel although it didn’t seem to bother him. He was uncomfortable but didn't seem to be in significant pain. I continued the supplements that I had read showed the most results in other dogs with cancer. In the end I still feel like I failed him, not trying aggressively enough with the supplements or not making him his own homemade food or not doing this that or the other. But who is to say Colloidal Silver would have done anything? If I had tried crazy baking soda treatments I could have sent him into heart failure. I wasn’t sure of anything, but my mind was awash with all of the things I had read or ever heard that could fight cancer, this invasive beast that had killed so many family members. Now it was taking the best dog I had ever had who was the equivalent of a human only in their 50s, no where near done with life with still so much love to give. Son of a bitch. 

Seemingly selfishly lost in my own depression at the time and dealing with my pregnancy, I feel like I wasn’t able to give him my all.  While that was true with everything else happening, I know that it is also true that I did try my best to keep him as healthy and comfortable as possible through it all. I believe it got us a good amount of extra time, the equivalent of a human living for 5 more years after diagnosis versus the 1 year sentence they were given.  That’s fairly significant considering most of those months were decent months.

I remember nights of me putting my legs up to ease my swollen feet. I would grunt and rub my swollen belly and he would grunt as well as he rolled onto his swollen belly. In my limited positioning, he would snuggle his face into my toes and I would rub the side of his head with my foot as we gazed into each other's eyes in an understanding misery, only mine was temporary and self-induced, the creation of life, while his was an unfair sentence that would take him from this place, the slow destruction of life. He held on and watched me grow our new baby, though, almost like he wanted to see the family unit completed to where it was advancing to before he left. He wouldn't give up the happy tail and seemed only in mild to moderate pain. After 8 and a half months, though, his front legs began to swell. We had all of this time with him to prepare for our goodbye and in the end it didn’t seem long enough. 

At one point one of the tumors on his side burst open and he needed a vet visit. She said she thought it was a cat bite or something like that, but I knew it was one of the growths he had on his side that must have broken open some how, or he dug it open himself. It was squirting blood, regardless of how it happened. We thought that was the end but we bandaged and tended to it, covering his dressing with pet sweaters to keep it in place...and he continued. When his legs started to swell and his one front paw seemed as though he had punctured it on something simply from the pressure of the fluid, we once again thought it was the end. We took him into the vet again and they said it was most likely the beginning of the end and this vet was actually so surprised that he had such a happy tail and was in such good spirits. We got him on an antibiotic to help with the swelling, and it did take it down temporarily. Because of the antibiotic we got around one more month after that point, but it was apparent that the stubborn old boy wasn't going to go on his own laying out in the sun one morning like we selfishly hoped would happen. After the course of the antibiotics he started to go downhill pretty fast.

He had taken to standing instead of laying down, we are unsure if it was because it hurt his stomach to lay on it or what, but it was a weird stage. At first we thought that it was just the pain pill we had been giving to him at the end to keep him more comfortable but he seemed to be slipping out of consciousness while standing in the yard, almost dropping to the ground at times like someone falling asleep and then catching themselves. This is when we made the decision. He had taken to nodding out standing up in between lucid moments of happy tail interaction, but he looked in your eyes like he knew something big had changed. He sat out in the yard in different spots just looking around the grounds, like he was becoming aware of something we were missing. He was a mere 9 years old, only 57 in dog years, but in those moments he looked to be well over 100 in dog wisdom. Something was changing and we knew it was time, but it took us a good day to accept our responsibility. Nobody wants to put their dog to sleep. Nobody. The only reason we "want" to do it is to ease their suffering because there comes a time when our responsibility to them is to take their life, to show them mercy. There is a lot of guilt involved in trying to make the right decision when the time comes, a lot of dilemma over when the time is right and I think we did good by our boy. In the end, I think he'd understand we were trying to give him the most life that we could without allowing him to suffer unnecessarily. 

The day we knew it was time, Celie had left for school and I was having a chat with Buster in the yard. He gave me the look. I didn't want to accept it, I sent Celie to school that morning half knowing. The dilemma was then that it was a Friday and I didn't want to put him to sleep while she was in school so that she wouldn't get to say goodbye and know he would be gone when she got home. He seemed to be okay with it. I wished there was an at home service in our area for pet euthanasia, but there isn't. So we kept him that one last night so that Celie could say her goodbyes and wouldn't be jarred with him just being gone. So Buster got one last night at the ranch and that next morning as he sat in the yard in his drowsy state in what had become his favorite spot I watched from the window as my husband walked Celie over to tell him goodbye before he took her to my parents’ house. I will never forget his reaction to her approach, snapping out of it and immediately going into his happy tail and walking up to her. He was running on pure love at that point. I believe he knew he was going to die, or at least knew that something was up, but he didn’t want to. He didn’t want to leave us, but regardless of all feelings from all parties involved it was time to say goodbye. 

We had to travel to Mezger's in State College because of our decision, because our normal vet was closed on Saturdays and we didn’t want to make him wait until Monday, fearing he was experiencing a lot of pain. I had asked my mother to watch Celie for us, but Jasper was only 2 months old at the time and was still nursing so he had to come along. When we got there, the vet on call had an emergency surgery he was in. We were preparing to put him to sleep in the back of our Jeep in the parking lot so that we could avoid any added stress on him by taking him inside a weird and scary place in his state. Two nurses came out to put an IV into his paw as I nursed Jasper in the back seat. They said it would only be a little bit of a wait. We spent the time crying and loving on Buster in the back of the Jeep with the back hatch up in the parking lot. I bounced and held Jasper all the while in one arm while petting Buster with the other. 

At one point a stranger approached us in what was an odd interaction. In retrospect, I imagine she saw us upset and was just moved to do anything to help. She came up to us and asked if we were putting a friend to sleep that day, which was pretty obvious, I guess. She asked if there was anything she could do, offering to take a picture of us. In my surprise at forced conversation at such an upsetting time I almost told her to get lost then paused and thought she surely must have just wanted to offer anything she could. Given his state and appearance, though, it seemed like a weird request, but I did give her my phone and let her take one last picture of the four of us in the Metzger’s parking lot. I wasn’t sure how I felt about it at first, but in the end decided on appreciative. It was a kind act of a total stranger and a final documentation of our sad time. 

By the time the vet was out of surgery and able to put him to sleep we had waited going on two hours. We had waited so long for his transition that when it was finally happening it was surreal how quickly it was over. He wouldn’t lay down so he was sitting up as it was done. The vet, my husband and myself positioned ourselves to catch him. I lovingly rubbed his furry face. The vet did the first injection and then with the second his head immediately dropped into my hand and we all caught him as he fell, gently letting him settle onto the blanket we had placed under him. Buster Buddy was finally resting. I cried and stroked his snout and we both pet him, apologizing. I think that the vet felt bad for us having to wait so long and with a baby in tow and all. He said Buster seemed like he was a really nice dog. I agreed, through my tears, that he was the best we had ever had and he was so great with our kids. He apologized for us having to wait and to our surprise said he would give us the euthanization free of charge. We thanked him heartily. 

The ride home was sad and the wrap up was bittersweet upon our return. We were happy to know he wasn’t suffering but had to make him a box, dig him a hole, and help Celie process her big feels. We saw her through the curious touching of his lifeless body. We witnessed her raw reactions, at one point screaming his name up into the sky like some dramatic scene from a movie. We felt his soft floppy ears, his favorite part to be rubbed during life. He would always push his head against your hand and grunt and groan with pleasure as you gave him a good ear scratch. One last stroke before we covered him up, burying him with his favorite squeaky duck toy and some tennis balls. We chose a spot under the hemlocks where he would always lay and bask himself in the morning sun. We could see him from both the kitchen and living room windows there. 

In the end, it was our duty to help Buster transition as comfortably as possible. We grant them that act of mercy despite our qualms, guilt and personal pain. It’s the least we can do. It will always make me sad that he didn’t live a longer life but he had just made it to his 9th birthday in February and we ultimately gave him a pretty happy life. He had survived having Lyme disease as well as anoplasmosis a few years back and had outlived his cancer prognosis by a significant amount of bonus time. His diagnosis led to a longer walk across the rainbow bridge than we initially anticipated, but I like to think he would understand that the choices we made were made out of love and compassion. Him was a good boy. 

Stand Up to Anything and Anyone

A picture is worth how many words? I need to say a few about this good thing right here. It's clever. It's simple. It's positive. It's me and not me at all, simultaneously. Its none of me. It's all of me. It was also not my idea at all. All in all...it was all little Miss Celie Ruth who will be turning 8 in 3 days and is proving herself to be not quite so little anymore. 

Last week on a family trip to Lowe's Home Improvement, which is sadly and gloriously one of Celie's favorite places, we were walking past the display for Valspar paint that they have enlarged since their removal of Olympic, which I personally feel is for the best (okay, it's one of my favorite places to), when #celiesays "Hey, mom! Look! That could be a thing!" She points over at the signage and then says "That could he a good message!" She holds her fingers up to cover a letter in one of the Valspar claims. A moment of awe fell over me and I was compelled to document the moment on my shitty Grammy-phone with my 4,677th-4,679th photos for posterity.

She later would use the word "metaphor" when describing it as being a good message. Arguing all semantics and technicalities aside, this still brought on a "holy-shit-you-do-listen-to-me" moment. You know they hear some things but the vast amount of pearls you attempt to spew out at your children seem to fall on deaf ears. Needless to say, I had a moment. Her two little fingers outstretched to cover up the "S" in Valspar's claim that their paint "Stands Up To Anything" which is funny, because I would have just snapped the pic without covering anything and laughed and said Ha Ha yeah: Celie stands up to anything. Tough little shit. That's a metaphor. Yadda yadda. Not my girl, though. My girl gave it a twist; she made it an action. In truth, she gave it a positive twist and and made it a call to action. Love her love her LOVE her! 

The positive, active mindset is one that I struggle the most to pass on to my daughter because it's also the hardest for me to hold onto myself. I experience such negative moods that it is essential for me to counteract that with grasps at positive perspectives. I strive to teach her to do her best to focus on the positive side of life as well as that side of me. While the beast cannot be fooled by platitudes or other contrived bullshit messages, I also try my best to look for things that are actually believable and resonate with me in order to raise my spirit. After every storm I do my best to trudge onward through the scattered debris and remember to look on the bright side of life as Monty Python taught me. It is a struggle, though, because I have both rides to hell and trips to the moon. In my understanding, the Eternal Nothing and The Absolute All are mere polarities of the same pendulum swing. I digress. 

My point being with all of this, parenting is hard regardless. I found it to be the hardest relationship to be in successfully because the size of the mirror may be small but it reflects every little fucking ugly angle right back at you. At least it only gets bigger in time, though, and if you break it, you're ego will be cut to shreds! Definitely keeps you on your toes with your bullshit and I come with a lot of bullshit. One of the things I have taught and encouraged Celie to do is to call me out on my bullshit. While you need to parent from a place of authority, they also need to see that you are human and capable of error. It does not serve their psyche to be totalitarian in your parenting, it crushes their spirits. They need to see that you are flawed, you make mistakes, and you are willing to own them. I've taught her to stand up to anything and anyone, including me. While some might think this is destructive, some people need to get real with their power trip parenting style. You aren't a super hero, you are only a person and they are capable of understanding that if you just take off the mask. I eat a lot of crow over the matter, willingly. Every day. I eat crow, I eat dirt, I eat my hat, I eat my words; I eat, I eat, I eat, I eat. Seems to be a theme in my life, but in this instance it's my sickening saving grace. While fucking up on the daily and losing my temper, saying stupid shit, doing stupid shit, and being generally emotionally unstable I have tried my best to explain the "boo boo in my head" to her since she was 2...because as a SAHM I had no other choice. I was alone with her and there was no escape. She picked the bathroom lock. That's a fucking metaphor. I had to keep it real in order to keep our attachment healthy. Has it shifted back and forth at times? Absolutely...it does with any parent-child relationship at times, but I always strive to remember that my point is connection and not control, which seems to be what comes programmed. Fighting the system is hard when you are a part of the system, which is why checks and balances are vital. I essentially taught Celie to call me out on my shit. This is essential but has also added to her already genetic inheritance of stubbornness from both sides, but I just like to think that she's going to be a hardheaded woman some day in a Cat Stevens kind of way. She knows how she should be treated because I am teaching her to recognize and express feeling even when I, her primary caregiver, cross a line. I don't just act like nothing happened and it's within my parental right to be a total asshole. She knows all about moods and emotions. She knows all about anxiety and is learning to deal with her own developing weirdness and the connected struggles. I do my best to help her to understand herself as I better understand myself through understanding her. Does that make sense? "I understand!" she is constantly telling me. It's fucked up...but I really believe her. I'm not the kind of mother that would stack bills to bet my kid is smarter than yours or give IQ that much overall value in a child. Celie Ruth is smart as a whip but her true gift lies in her innate sensitivity, her learned compassion, and her striking emotional intelligence. Kids can understand a lot more than you think they can if you just talk to them, meet them at their own level, and never take away their source of love. Know your audience, keep explaining yourself in order to be understood, and eat the fucking crow. Always. EAT IT!! Just don't choke on the feathers.

Okay, so I couldn't just say a few words about this image but I can seldom say only a few about anything. I essentially never really stood up to anyone or anything and I took people's bullshit all of my life which feeds into many of my problems. My goal with my daughter as a parent is to raise a woman that will not react that way to the world she finds herself in, no matter what. Celie has been through her share of bullshit and I will inevitably leave her with her own pile of bullshit because of my own bullshit because of their bullshit, but I hope that it's a small pile and doesn't stink as bad as mine does. #parentinggoals Knockin' off the shit, my girl is going to be turning 8 on Sunday and birthdays are bittersweet, every one of 'em. Her looks are changing; she's growing into her big girl face. I'm growing up right along with her, though. She has, so far, been my biggest teacher. Being called out is hard enough in life, but when it's by a child it does all kinds of weird things to your heart and mind. Ego punches; growing pains. Children innately have a very strong sense of indignation and if you allow them to apply a durable coat, they actually have their own excellent scrub and stain resistance. This whole idea was just too phenomenally beautiful not to share. Stand up to anything and anyone. 

Trapped Inside the Interstellar Bookshelf

The cycle of Life. It's fucked up, right? I've been in this crazy head space this past year and I have failed to describe it using words aside from saying that it feels like I am trapped inside the Interstellar bookshelf. Have you seen the movie Interstellar? If you haven't, you should; it's a good flick. And that's how I feel. Closterphobic, lost in space. All of time laid out before me. Endlessly spirally away from me. It's not an entirely bad feeling. It's a bit nihilistic, because everything I do is futile and pointless, but in the same breath, a fractal mirroring of that...everything I do is of the utmost importance. I am inside the cycle of life peering out at the entirety of the thing. It’s a little nostalgic, because I am fixated on the past and how much things have changed. But we can’t go back, we can only move ahead. And the beat goes on.

I am the age now that my parents, aunts, uncles, etc. were when I was Celie's age, when I remember them. I am them. They are my grandmother, who I can remember in her late fifties, who is gone now, God rest her soul, and I miss her every day. I'm a panicking child periodically as I think of the monotony of life and my role in it and I just want to crawl up into Grandma's lap again. I'm a mother and a wife. What the fuck happened? It feels like high school was yesterday. What happened to my twenties? I'm going to wake up soon and be in my 60's, I'm fairly certain that's how it happens. Out of nowhere, boom, there you are. Before you know it, you're elderly....going back into the vagina of life only to be shot out of one again. It's like a conveyer belt! I guess only if you believe in reincarnation, but still...I digress.

I just gave birth to my second child 4 months ago. My entire pregnancy seems like a blur. My dog was sick and dying of cancer for 9 months right along with my pregnancy. Life and death were occurring simultaneously once again. He died when our baby boy was 2 months old; at least he got to meet him. We just built an addition onto our house, two rooms that we desperately needed for expanding our family. My daughter's bedroom was my old office space, a tiny little room that's not much more than a closet. We remodeled the entire room for her when I was pregnant the first time. Since then we remodeled the bathroom and moved the washer and dryer into her already extremely small room. I felt horrible that she barely had a space of her own so I tried to make it hers the best that I could, getting her a lava lamp and a My Little Pony clock and all kinds of purple shit. There was a bed, a dresser that was blocked by the bed so it couldn't even be opened fully, and a tiny path to the washer and dryer, that were stacked in the corner. I would sit on her bed as I loaded laundry. It was tight, but we made it work for the past 6 years.

When I became a mother I lost that space, that room that I had my computer and office things set up in, where I would hide and write. In building the addition, we moved my daughter to our old bedroom, so her old bedroom could become JUST the laundry room but I have taken it over as more of a multipurpose room. My husband put wire shelves up along the whole length of the wall and built me a countertop in it. I made it my desk already. We are moving my two bulky filing cabinets that are in our dining room into it soon. This room is going to clear up a lot of cluttered space throughout the house. We are still shifting things all around; it's been so chaotic here lately. Everything is up in the air and there is a Great Settling that is going to take place. There's so much to do but I feel like I know where I'm going now.

Creating life is a mind fuck. It's intense, not only the whole process of pregnancy and the mighty pain of labor, but the rearing and raising. Parenting is what can change the world. Parents are directly molding the entire future...no pressure. There has been so much change here lately. Another baby, finally. Our dog is dead. Our house is changing. Trees were cut down?! (Is that a metaphor?) We just celebrated our 10 year wedding anniversary. I put off having a second child for a few years to take care of myself mentally. Although, I feel tremendous guilt for not making a playmate for my daughter sooner, I really needed those years to get to a better state of mind, one that is conducive to parenting. Parenting alone all week took its toll on me. This time around my husband is working locally so he can be home every night, that's a real game changer. It's a completely different life for us and we are still learning to coparent during the week. It's been an adjustment.

So, here I am. After 6 years and a ton of life changes I find myself once again sitting in this little room writing. I paid all of our bills the other night, too. I have been avoiding that…for years. I think having somewhere to actually sit my laptop and paperwork helps. That’s a whole other part of me that I haven’t been in touch with since I became a mother and had to give up this room. This room is a metaphor. This is where my Drifting Sun dream began over 12 years ago. This is where I set my small business self up. This is where I kept up with my blogging self. This is where I kept my life in check with my office manager bill-paying self. This is where I designed t-shirts with my graphic designer self. There are so many parts of me that I lost when I became a mother because I foolishly thought that was what mothers were supposed to do. Ultimately, this way of thinking is what required me to take that time to go to therapy, etc. I had lost my Self in motherhood. I feel that I have done enough self analysis and discovery to know how to approach it this time around with a better grasp of what I need to do to take care of myself, maintain my own identity and continue to grow as a person. Self-love is important because you can’t pour from an empty glass. I am no good as a mother if I am not CONTINUALLY caring for my self. Now doing it is the hard part. So, it’s a long road ahead. At least I am more self aware and know when I’m fucking up now.

Inside the Interstellar bookshelf, I reside. It’s funny that I am in this room once again after all these years. I’ve heard that nothing ever goes away until it teaches you what you need to know. Apparently I have more to learn from this room. It’s like starting out, making tons of progress, you think, then unraveling all of said progress, and ending up right where you started in the beginning but with new eyes.